Democracy depends on a vivid public sphere, where ideas disseminate into the public and can be discussed – and challenged - by everyone. Journalism has contributed significantly to this social mediation by reducing complexity, providing information on salient topics and (planned) political solutions. The digital transformation of the public sphere leads to new forms of media provision, distribution, and use. Journalism has struggled to adapt to the new conditions. Journalistic news values, relevant to democracy, are being replaced by ones relevant (...) to social media platforms’ attention seeking business model. We plead for a broad public debate about the ongoing platformization and about possible policies to ensure a media system that serves and strengthens democracy. (shrink)

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. This (...) paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are, and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied. It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies how potentially questionnaire-based measures can be combined with process measures to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking. (shrink)

We comment on two articles on social referencing and social appraisal. We agree with Walle, Reschke, and Knothe’s argument that at one level of analysis, social referencing and social appraisal are functionally equivalent: In both cases, another person’s emotional expression is observed and this expression informs the observer’s own emotional reactions and behavior. However, we also agree with Clément and Dukes’s view that, there is an important difference between social referencing and social appraisal. We also argue that they are likely (...) to occur at different stages of emotion process. (shrink)

Introduction : death, metaphysics, and morality / John Martin Fischer Death knocks / Woody Allen Rationality and the fear of death / Jeffrie G. Murphy Death / Thomas Nagel The Makropulos case : reflections on the tedium of immortality / Bernard Williams The evil of death / Harry S. Silverstein How to be dead and not care : a defense of Epicurus / Stephen E. Rosenbaum The dead / Palle Yourgrau The misfortunes of the dead / George Pitcher Harm (...) to others / Joel Feinberg Reasons and persons / Derek Parfit Why is death bad? / Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer Death and the value of life / Jeff McMahan Annihilation / Steven Luper-Foy Epicurus and annihilation / Stephen E. Rosenbaum Some puzzles about the evil of death / Fred Feldman Well-being and time / J. David Velleman. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer; XIV*—Responsibility and Failure, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 251–272, https://doi.org/1.

John Martin Fischer; XIV*—Responsibility and Failure, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 251–272, https://doi.org/1.

In previous work we have presented a reply to the Lucretian Symmetry, which has it that it is rational to have symmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. Our reply relies on Parfit-style thought-experiments. Here we reply to a critique of our approach by Huiyuhl Yi, which appears in this journal: Brueckner and Fischer on the evil of death. We argue that this critique fails to attend to the specific nature of the thought-experiments (and our associated argument). More specifically, (...) the thought-experiments seek to elicit attitudes about (say) past pleasures per se, and not insofar as such pleasures are connected to more pleasures in the future or a greater total amount of pleasures in one’s life overall. (shrink)

While executive functions and self-regulated learning strategy use have been found to be related in several populations, this relationship has not been studied in adult online distance education. This is surprising as self-regulation, and thus using such strategies, is very important here. In this setting, we studied the relation between basic executive functions and reported SRL-strategy use within a correlational design with 889 adult online distance students. In this study, we performed regression analyses and took age and processing speed into (...) consideration, as processing speed and EFs decrease with age, whereas self-regulation is reported to increase with age. Cognitively measured working memory was not related to reported SRL-strategy use in adult ODE students. Thus, even though the SRL-components within the strategies seem to elicit working memory, reported SRL-strategy use is not related to the functioning of this basic EF. This means that if SRL-strategy use needs to be increased in adult ODE students, training of working memory might not be an effective manner for achieving that goal. Better shifting and processing speed were related to less reported SRL-strategy use, which might suggest that SRL-strategies might be used to compensate for lower shifting and lower processing speed. With increasing age, the number of contacts with peers or teachers decreases. This latter finding might be of relevance during the pandemic since contacts with others is importance during lockdown. (shrink)

Like many readers, I sympathize with Charles Altieri's attempt in "Presence and Reference in a Literary Text"1 to correct Derrida's assimilation of poetry to linguistic "freeplay without origin." But Altieri's "middle ground" solution is at best a stopgap measure, delaying the deconstructionist project but not finally answering it. Altieri agrees with Derrida that "language is not primarily a set of pictures ideally mirroring a world" . But he resists the conclusion that for Derrida follows from this premise, namely, that poems (...) are consequently self-referential and antimimetic. Instead Altieri adopts a position between these two extremes, seeing in art the representation not of reality but of the "stances" we take toward our world. Poems reveal "the qualities of human actions" . In "This is Just to Say," for example, Williams constructs a "simple drama" which brings to light a speaker's "honesty, self-knowledge, and faith in his wife's understanding" . · 1. Charles Altieri, "Presence and Reference in a Literary Text: The Example of Williams' 'This is Just to Say,'" Critical Inquiry 5 : 489-510; all further references to this article will be included in this text. Michael Fischer is an assistant professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He has written on nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern critical theory and on the defense of poetry in modern criticism. (shrink)

By blending multiple strands of thought into one ideology, Chinese Syncretists of the pre-imperial period created an essential guide to contemporary ideas about self, society, and government. Merging traditions such as Ruism, Mohism, Daoism, Legalism, and Yin-Yang naturalism into their work, Syncretists created an integrated intellectual approach that contrasts with other, more specific philosophies. Presenting the first full English translation of the earliest example of a Syncretist text, this volume introduces Western scholars to both the brilliance of the syncretic method (...) and a critical work of Chinese leadership. Written by Shi Jiao, China's first syncretic thinker, during the Warring States Period of 481 to 221 BCE, _Shizi_ is similar to Machiavelli's _The Prince_ in that it dispenses wisdom to would-be rulers. It stresses the need for leaders to be detached and objective. It further encourages self-cultivation and effective government, recommending that rulers maintain self-discipline, hire reliable people, delegate power transparently, and promote others in an orderly fashion. The people, it is argued, will emulate their leader's wisdom and virtue, and a just and peaceful state will result. Paul Fischer provides an extensive introduction and a chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis of the text--outlining the importance of syncretism in Chinese culture--and explores the text's particular features, authorship, transmission, loss, and reconstruction over time. The _Shizi_ set the stage for a long history of syncretic endeavor in China, and its study provides insight into the vital traditions of early Chinese philosophy. It is also a template for interpreting other well-known works, such as the Confucian _Analects_, the Daoist _Laozi_, the Mohist _Mozi_, and the Legalist _Shang jun shu_. (shrink)

Przekład na podstawie: „Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility”, w: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, red. Ferdinand Schoeman, 81–106; przedruk w: John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility, 63–83. Przekład za zgodą Autora. Autor przedstawia model odpowiedzialności moralnej oparty na faktycznej sekwencji i pojęciu zdolności reagowania na racje, a następnie przeprowadza analogię między tym modelem a opracowanym przez Roberta Nozicka modelem wiedzy opartej na faktycznej sekwencji, oraz wprowadza pojęcie semikompatybilizmu.

This is a selection of essays on moral responsibility that represent the major components of John Martin Fischer's overall approach to freedom of the will and moral responsibility. The collection exhibits the overall structure of Fischer's view and shows how the various elements fit together to form a comprehensive framework for analyzing free will and moral responsibility. The topics include deliberation and practical reasoning, freedom of the will, freedom of action, various notions of control, and moral accountability. The (...) essays seek to provide a foundation for our practices of holding each other (and ourselves) morally and legally accountable for our behavior. A crucial move is the distinction between two kinds of control. According to Fischer, "regulative control" involves freedom to choose and do otherwise ("alternative possibilities"), whereas "guidance control" does not. Fischer contends that guidance control is all the freedom we need to be morally responsible agents. Further, he contends that such control is fully compatible with causal determinism. Additionally, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alternative possibilities in order for there to be a legitimate point to practical reasoning. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that guidance control, and not regulative control, is associated with moral responsibility, a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility (that ties together responsibility for actions, omissions, consequences, and character), and an account of the value of moral responsibility. On this account, the value of exhibiting freedom (of the relevant sort) and thus being morally responsible for one's behavior is a species of the value of artistic self-expression. (shrink)

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

Replies to critics Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9669-y Authors John Martin Fischer, University of California, Riverside, CA USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

There are many introductions to the animal ethics literature. There aren't many introductions to the practice of doing animal ethics. Bob Fischer's Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction fills that gap, offering an accessible model of how animal ethics can be done today. The book takes up classic issues, such as the ethics of eating meat and experimenting on animals, but tackles them in an empirically informed and nuanced way. It also covers a range of relatively neglected issues in animal (...) ethics, such as the possibility of insect sentience and the ethics of dealing with pests. Finally, the book doesn't assess every current practice using standard ethical theories, but tries to evaluate some of them using the moral frameworks endorsed by those involved. So, for instance, there is a chapter on the way that animal care and use committees try to justify some of the educational uses of animals, and the chapter on zoos considers the way that international zoological societies justify compromising animal welfare. The book wraps up with a discussion of the future of animal ethics. Each chapter opens with a helpful initial overview of the chapter and ends with a list of suggested readings to help students go further on their own. Key Features Covers animal ethics from an empirically informed perspective, bringing philosophy into conversation with key issues in animal science, conservation biology, economics, ethology, and legal studies, among other fields Provides ample coverage of the most salient current topics, including, for example: Debates about which animals are sentient The suffering of wild animals Research ethics The boundaries of activism Avoids suggesting that animal ethics is simply the practice of applying the right general theory to a problem, instead allowing readers to first work out the specific costs and benefits of making ethical decisions Impresses upon the reader the need for her to work out for herself the best way forward with difficult ethical issues, suggesting that progress can indeed be made Includes summaries and recommended readings at the end of each chapter. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Martin Heidegger und Hans Jantzen gehören zu den wichtigsten Vertretern der Philosophie und Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Seit den 1920er bis Ende der 1960er Jahre kritisierten sie vorherrschende, naturwissenschaftlich geprägte Auffassungen des Raums und entwickelten einen neuartigen Begriff. Dieser sogenannte künstlerische Raum sei ein freies Zusammenspiel von materiellen und immateriellen Bestandteilen, das als solches erst in der Wahrnehmung real wird. Die Autorin arbeitet dieses Verständnis heraus und stellt es in einen geistes- und zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext. Neben der Bedeutung der Bestandteile und (...) der Grenze für die Gestalt und die Wirkung des Raums kommt der des Lichts sowie Jantzens Diaphanie-Begriff besondere Aufmerksamkeit zu. Für die erörterte Raumbeschaffenheit werden Anhaltspunkte in der gotischen Kathedrale und in Werken der Bronzezeit, Dorik, Ottonik und Moderne sowie von Kindern und Laien festgestellt. Im Anschluss an zeitgenössische Theorien ergeben sich Übereinstimmungen mit dem Konzept des geopolitischen Groß-raums und einer erdbezogenen Ästhetik. Vor dem Hintergrund des Kunst- und Sprachbegriffs der Epoche wird abschließend Heideggers und Jantzens Ansicht untersucht, alle Kunst sei sprachlich, sowie inwiefern sich diese Sprachlichkeit räumlich manifestiert. Die Zusammenführung von Jantzens Analyse ottonischer Wortbilder mit Heideggers Auslegung moderner Dichtung und Bildkunst zeigt, dass deren Raumbegriff unabhängig von politischen Bezügen bestehen kann. „Bei diesem Buch handelt es sich fraglos um eine kunsthistorisch und philosophisch bedeutsame Untersuchung.“. (shrink)

mechanism" is frequently encountered in the social science literature, but there is considerable confusion about the exact meaning of the term. The article begins by addressing the main conceptual issues. Use of this term is the hallmark of an approach that is critical of the explanatory deficits of correlational analysis and of the covering-law model, advocating instead the causal reconstruction of the processes that account for given macro-phenomena. The term "social mechanisms" should be used to refer to recurrent processes generating (...) a specific kind of outcome. Explanation of social macro-phenomena by mechanisms typically involves causal regression to lower-level elements, as stipulated by methodological individualism. While there exist a good many mechanism models to explain emergent effects of collective behavior, we lack a similarly systematic treatment of generative mechanisms in which institutions and specific kinds of structural configurations play the decisive role. Key Words: causal regression • correlational analysis • emergent effects • micro-macro processes • social mechanisms • structural determinants. (shrink)

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell's work is distinctive not only in its importance to philosophy but also for its remarkable interdisciplinary range. Cavell is read avidly by students of film, photography, painting, and music, but especially by students of literature, for whom Cavell offers major readings of Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare, and others. In this first book-length study of Cavell's writings, Michael Fischer examines Cavell's relevance to the controversies surrounding poststructuralist literary theory, particularly works by Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, (...) and Stanley Fish. Throughout his study, Fischer focuses on skepticism, a central concern of Cavell's multifaceted work. Cavell, following J. L. Austin and Wittgenstein, does not refute the radical epistemological questioning of Descartes, Hume, and others, but rather characterizes skepticism as a significant human possibility or temptation. As presented by Fischer, Cavell's accounts of both external-world and other-minds skepticism share significant affinities with deconstruction, a connection overlooked by contemporary literary theorists. Fischer follows Cavell's lead in examining how different genres address the problems raised by skepticism and goes on to show how Cavell draws on American and English romanticism in fashioning a response to it. He concludes by analyzing Cavell's remarks about current critical theory, focusing on Cavell's uneasiness with some of the conclusions reached by its practitioners. Fischer shows that Cavell's insights, grounded in powerful analyses of Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, permit a fresh view of Derrida, Miller, de Man, and Fish. The result is not only a revealing characterization of deconstruction but a much-needed and insightful introduction to Cavell's rich but difficult oeuvre. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss sequent calculi for the propositional fragment of the logic of HYPE. The logic of HYPE was recently suggested by Leitgeb as a logic for hyperintensional contexts. On the one hand we introduce a simple \-system employing rules of contraposition. On the other hand we present a \-system with an admissible rule of contraposition. Both systems are equivalent as well as sound and complete proof-system of HYPE. In order to provide a cut-elimination procedure, we expand the (...) calculus by connections as introduced in Kashima and Shimura. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss sequent calculi for the propositional fragment of the logic of HYPE. The logic of HYPE was recently suggested by Leitgeb as a logic for hyperintensional contexts. On the one hand we introduce a simple \-system employing rules of contraposition. On the other hand we present a \-system with an admissible rule of contraposition. Both systems are equivalent as well as sound and complete proof-system of HYPE. In order to provide a cut-elimination procedure, we expand the (...) calculus by connections as introduced in Kashima and Shimura. (shrink)

1. bd. Descartes' leben, werke und lehre. 4. neu bearb. aufl. 1897.--2. bd. Spinozas leben, werke und lehre. 4. neu bearb. aufl. 1898.--3. bd. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leben, werke und lehre. 4. aufl. 1902.--4-5. bd. Immanuel Kant und seine lehre. 4. neu bearb. aufl. 1898-99.--6. bd. Fichtes leben, werke und lehre. 3. durchgesehene aufl. 1900.--7. bd. Schellings leben, werke und lehre. 3. aufl. 1902.--8. bd. l.-2. th. Hegels leben, werke und lehre. 1901.--9. bd. Schopenhauers leben, werke und lehre. 2. neu (...) bearb. und verm. aufl. 1898.--10. bd. Francis Bacon und seine schule. Entwicklungsgeschichte der erfahrungsphilosophie. 3. aufl. 1904. (shrink)

There is a strong interconnection between the social and environmental spheres. The efforts of monitoring and forecasting of disastrous events can illustrate benefits and threats of technicization and science. In ecophilosophy the forecasting of hazards is today extremely needed. It is not about creating theoretical unified structures or practical return to holistic harmony of a primordial man with nature. It is about, as Félix Guattari once held it, the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment. Though the (...) desired maintenance of the conflict between industrial society and natural systems now seems impossible, we still can start moving towards it: theoretically, by developing eco-philosophical ideas, and practically, monitoring and forecasting catastrophes and disasters, to protect human life and health and, as eco-philosophers would say, keep land usable for human purposes. The topic of the earthquakes forecast today is more in demand than ever. (shrink)

As COVID-19 continues to spread, a variety of COVID-19 tracking apps have been introduced to help contain the pandemic. Deployment of this technology poses serious challenges of effectiveness, technological problems and risks to privacy and equity. The ethical use of CTAs depends heavily on the protection of voluntariness. Voluntary use of CTAs implies not only the absence of a legal obligation to employ the app but also the absence of more subtle forms of coercion such as enforced exclusion from certain (...) social and work activities. The protection of individual rights to voluntary use can be enhanced through an ethics by design approach in the development of CTAs that treat the introduction of CTAs for what it is: a complete novelty that is being tested for the first time in democracies. (shrink)

Knowledge work increasingly takes place in collaborative events from different and changing workplaces due to mobility, multi-locational, and geographical distribution of team members. What are the key elements to create mutual understanding and make creative collaborative decisions in global business meetings? How can these key elements be designed as shikake nudges to build awareness of the individual and team conditions to help knowledge workers make better work environment choices and reach higher levels of engagement? We addressed this question as a (...) transformative journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding in the context of collaborative decision making in creative global business meetings. We present a “Six Steps to Engagement” framework that offers three feedback loops as shikake triggers to improve the local and global collaboration context and behavior, and three choice-decision-commitment steps toward improving the work environment and increasing knowledge work productivity. To support this framework, we define the following: (1) mutual understanding metrics (MUM) and method for self-assessment and 360 team assessment that define different MUM stages in the journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding; and (2) an engagement Matrix of Choices (eMoC) prototype to assist geographically distributed knowledge workers to make explicit choices with an understanding of the potential level of engagement and collaboration they can achieve and the respective enablers and hindrances. We argue that iterative and continuous MUM assessment and explicit eMoC choices are central to achieve mutual understanding, high-performance teamwork, and eliminate rework, coordination, and decision wait time. This iterative process (1) allows team members to build awareness of their local conditions and make their local conditions transparent and visible to the rest of the team; (2) provides a feedback mechanism that indicates the engagement potential of each team member and the team, as well as a trigger or nudge toward moving to higher levels of engagement; (3) leads to the alignment of expectations and synchronicity of potential engagement levels. (shrink)

Brain functions are stochastic processes without intentionality whereas mind emerges from brain functions as a Hegelian “change from quantity”, that is, on the order of 1012 profusely interconnected neurons, “into a new quality”: the collective phenomenon of the brain's self-experience. This self-referential and self-observing quality we have in mind is capable of (recursively) observing its self-observations, i.e., interpreting change that is meaningful in relation to itself. The notion of self-interpretation embodies the idea of a “hermeneutic circle”, that is, (in interpretation (...) theory) the treatment of the whole in relation to its parts. (shrink)

The development of postgraduate studies and the establishment of the Ph.D. in Britain are discussed. Events leading to the introduction of the Ph.D. degree between 1917 and 1920 are traced, and Germany and America's influence on the acceptance of postgraduate education and research in Britain is addressed. An analysis of the highly developed college system peculiar to the ancient English universities is included to identify factors that delayed the introduction of the Ph.D. in Britain. Individual provincial universities are chronicled, together (...) with Cambridge, London, Scotland, Wales, and Oxford (the first to institute the Ph.D.). In analyzing the political forces at work in the inception of the research degree, attention is directed to the vital role played by the Universities Bureau of the British Empire (predecessor of the Association of Commonwealth Universities) and the pressures exerted by government to persuade the universities to cooperate with each other in providing postgradute courses and degrees. It is concluded that the arrival of the Ph.D. at British universities symbolized the modern era of organized training in research that was conceived and nurtured in Germany and imported and commercialized by America. (SW). (shrink)

Der junge Heidegger hat die Welt begeistert und das Denken revolutioniert, indem er die lebendige Existenz des Menschen in den Mittelpunkt gestellt und dem Denken eine ungeheure Macht zugeschrieben hat: Das Denken stiftet die wahre Existenz der Menschheit und kann ihre Entfremdung aufheben. Sich selber hat er als Herold der Zeitenwende gesehen, der die abendländische Seinsvergessenheit durchbricht. Um sein Leben ranken sich ein Gewirr von Legenden, Schutzbehauptungen, Halbwahrheiten und Ganzlügen. Seine enthusiastische Parteinahme für den Nationalsozialismus und sein grotesk gescheiterter Versuch, (...) die deutsche Universität ins Neue Reich zu führen, lösen noch heute erregte Debatten aus. Wie ist aus dem konventionellen autoritätshörigen Priesterkandidaten über Nacht ein radikaler Philosoph geworden? Und wie aus diesem Kritiker philosophischer Elfenbeintürme der Guru einer Seinsreligion, der die Gegenwart grundsätzlich in Frage stellt? Warum verliebt sich der Vertreter eines unhinterfragten Antisemitismus ausgerechnet in eine jüdische Studentin? Fischers Charakterstudie fragt nach dem Zusammenhang von Leben und Werk. Sie ist die bisher umfassendste Biographie Heideggers, die auch der Politik die nötige Aufmerksamkeit schenkt. (shrink)

Klein, Renate The practice of surrogacy in Australia has been controversial since its beginning in the late 1980s. In 1988, the famous 'Kirkman case' in the state of Victoria put surrogacy on the national map. This was a two-sisters surrogacy - Linda and Maggie Kirkman and the resulting baby Alice - in which power differences between the two women were extraordinarily stark: Maggie was the glamorous and well spoken woman of the world; Linda who carried the baby, was the (...) demure school teacher in child-like frocks and pig tails. Their IVF doctor applauded altruistic surrogacy. He called it 'gestational surrogacy' and proclaimed that if the so-called surrogate mother didn't use her own eggs, thus wasn't the baby's 'genetic' mother, no attachment would ensue! This statement is haunting us to this day. It is patently absurd: as a baby grows in a woman's body over the nine months of the pregnancy, it is hard to see why the 24/7 presence of the baby inside her body, its growth, its interaction with her would be any different whether s/he has the mother's genes! (shrink)